All brass (no 'pot' metal). Some marks around the screws, so it's had some attention, but then it would have needed that at some point in its life to replace gaskets etc. It's in its original box, although I'm a little bit dubious about the 'originality' of that particular box, particularly its stuck on label, although I could be wrong.

It's not the fact that it's brass that it'll sound better, it's due to 'pot metal' degrading with time due to impurities introduced during careless manufacturing methods back in the day. The 'pot metal' alloy starts to expand and eventually crack up and in some cases fall to pieces, particularly when being dismantled for servicing etc. Pot metal, otherwise known as 'monkey metal', is an alloy mix that is causing many problems, not only in certain gramophone sound boxes, but in a host of other components that are made of this stuff and are of a similar vintage. So I suppose you could be correct in saying that the brass ones will sound better if being compared to a pot alloy type that's starting to break up, otherwise there wouldn't actually be any difference that you'd notice between a good brass type and a good cast alloy type.